Russell Kirk addresses the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan – 1.10.94 On Saturday, November 9, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute is hosting a conference on the 60th Anniversary of Russell Kirk’sThe Conservative Mind.The conference, which will examine the impact of Kirk’s monumental book—which both named and shaped the nascent conservative movement in the United States—is to be held at the Eberhard Center on the downtown Grand Rapids campus of Grand Valley State University, which Acton supporters will recognize as the...

The 2013 Global Slavery Index estimates that 29.8 million people are enslaved worldwide. To help address this problem, Pope Francis called for action bat the growing problem of human trafficking and modern forms of slavery. At the pope’s request, Vatican officials and other experts met last weekend to discuss ways to better tackle the growing scourge of trafficking in humans and other forms of exploitation: Human trafficking is a crime against humanity that should be recognized as such and punished...

Does promoting limited government require abandoning mitment to the poor? Ryan Messmore,whose answer is a firm “no”, argues that non-government institutions can provide personalized assistance to help individuals fix relational problems, e poverty and lead healthy lives: Calls for limited government are often mistakenly equated with a disregard for people in need. This flawed line of reasoning assumes that poverty is primarily a material problem and that government bears the primary responsibility for solving it by increasing welfare and entitlement...

Today many Christians in America will engage in the political activity of voting. But as Peter Leithart reminds us, worship is the leading political activity of Christians: Christians are engaged in political action just by being part of the church. Worship is the leading political activity of Christians. In worship, we sing Psalms that call on God to judge the wicked and defend the oppressed, and God hears our Psalms; we pray for rulers to rule in righteousness; we hear...

I and Jordan Ballor have mented onEnder’s Game this week (here and here), but the story is literally packed with insightful themes, many of which touch upon issues relevant to Acton’s core principles. Another such issue is that of the problems with Neo-Malthusianism, the belief that overpopulation poses such a serious threat to civilization and the environment that population control measures e ethical imperatives. Such a perspective tends to rely on one or both of the following fallacies: a zero-sum...

My wife despises Sid Meier. She’s never met him, nor would she even recognize his name. But she knows someone is responsible for creating the source of my addiction. For over twenty years I’ve spent (or wasted, as my wife would say) countless hours playing Civilization, Meier’s award-winning strategy game. Every time I play the game I enter an almost trance-like state plete immersion. According to positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, what I’m experiencing in that moment is known as “flow.”...

If you missed Acton’s Anniversary Dinner on October 24th, well, you sort of blew it. A packed house ed noted satirist, student of stupidity, political reporter (but I repeat myself), and all-around fun guy P.J. O’Rourke to Grand Rapids, and he came prepared to let the audience knowjust how unpreparedhe was to address an Acton Institute function: For more from this year’s dinner, check out this earlier post: ‘Acton has Given Me a Backbone’ ...

Over at the University Bookman today, I review John Lanchester’s novel Capital. I mend the book. I don’t explore it in the review, “Capital Vices and Commercial Virtues,” but for those who have been following the antics of Banksy, there is a similar performance artist character in the novel that has significance for the development of the narrative. As I write in the review, the vice of envy, captured in the foreboding phrase, “We Want What You Have,” animates the...

I recently shared a lengthy excerpt from Faithful in All God’s House, highlighting the investment-return motif that appears throughout the Bible. “All of God’s gifts to mankind are as a divine investment on which the investor expects full return,” write Berghoef and DeKoster. Several readers pushed back on the analogy, interpreting it to mean that God rolls out his divine plan according to earthbound assumptions, as if “prudent investment” means being beholden to the outputs of a narrow, materialistic cost-benefit...

Mark Scibilia-Carver, in a National Catholic Reporter “Viewpoint” piece, decries the nationwide call ing weekend for Catholics to financially support the Archdiocese for the Military Services, which serves the entire U.S. military. That includes “more than 220 installations in 29 countries, patients in 153 V.A. Medical Centers, and federal employees serving outside the boundaries of the USA in 134 countries. Numerically, the AMS is responsible for more than 1.8 million men, women, and children.” Why is Scibilia-Carver upset? He believes...